A Nation Ponders Its Growing Digital Divide

By STEVE LOHR

Published: October 21, 1996

The Warren County Library serves 7,000 people in rural Georgia. But the distance separating the community library from the information age is measured not in miles but in dollars.

Sandra Green, the librarian, has a total budget of $38,000 a year that must pay for everything, from staff salaries to utility bills. The library has a three-year-old personal computer, but it is not linked to any networks.

''If we could get help to get on the Internet, it would be great,'' Ms. Green said. ''If that ever happened, it would enlighten a lot of people here.''

Ms. Green's hopes for crossing America's digital divide, and the hopes of many thousands of libraries and schools, rest with a little-known, eight-member board of Federal regulators and state officials. The joint board held its final meeting on Thursday in Washington, and by Nov. 7 it must recommend how to give libraries and elementary and secondary schools access to modern telecommunications services at discount prices.

The special treatment for libraries and schools is the result of an amendment in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was signed into law in February. These educational institutions, Congress decided, should be given subsidies so that people of all backgrounds, especially children, have access to the tools of information technology.

Without measures to insure access, many Senators and Representatives warned, telecommunications deregulation could well have the unintended consequence of widening the gap between society's haves and have-nots.

Yet while the amendment to help schools and libraries is sweeping in scope, the language is vague. It speaks of ''enhanced services,'' which nearly everyone involved in the issue takes to mean Internet access. But it also discusses making services ''affordable,'' which is an invitation for debate.

Congress left it for the joint board to wade through the intricate economics and politics of how to institute the preferred terms for schools and libraries -- as well as overhaul the longstanding ''universal service'' provisions, a system of payments and subsidies to insure that telephone service is available to all the nation's households.

So the eight-person board is faced with somehow trying to determine how much help schools and libraries should get and at what cost. The board includes three members of the Federal Communications Commission, four state utility commissioners and the public counsel for Missouri, who is designated a consumer representative. The board's recommendations will form the basis for rules that the F.C.C. will issue by May.

There is plenty of debate within the board, and the deliberations have attracted attention at the highest level of the Government. President Clinton's frequently mentioned ''bridge to the 21st century'' is in good part a high-technology vision, with school children logging onto the Internet.

On Oct. 10, during a speech in Knoxville, Tenn., the President called on the joint board to give every school and library basic Internet service for free, which he called an ''E-rate,'' or educational rate. ''I urge the F.C.C. and the state regulators who have a say in this to make the E-rate a reality for our schools,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''This is a big deal.''

Reed E. Hundt, the F.C.C. chairman, is the joint board's leading proponent of generous support, quickly granted, for schools and libraries. While only 9 percent of America's classrooms have access to the Internet today, Mr. Hundt talks ambitiously about wiring them all in the next five years.

In his view, the Government should guide technology investment in the interests of social equity. ''The dawning of the information age represents an opportunity for equality that we have not enjoyed since Horace Mann first championed the idea of free public school,'' Mr. Hundt said.

Other members of the joint board are reluctant to go as far as Mr. Hundt. The board's role, they say, is to devise a plan of balanced economic regulation rather than to champion social change, which could be quite costly. The discounts for schools and libraries will be covered by payments from telephone companies, but those charges will be passed along to phone customers.

The legislation, some members of the joint board note, calls for preferred rates for enhanced telecommunications services but does not stipulate providing services for free.

In addition, Mr. Hundt believes that schools and libraries should have help to pay for wiring up computer networks. But others on the board say the subsidies should only cover services and not equipment.

''There is a concern among several members of the board that we could really balloon the cost of the program,'' said Rachelle B. Chong, an F.C.C. commissioner. ''And ratepayers are all going to have to pay for this.''

The Administration estimates that the cost of linking schools and libraries to the Internet would be as much as $2.5 billion annually for five years. The Consumer Federation of America estimates that would add 50 cents a month, or $6 a year, to the average American's home phone bill.

The joint board, analysts say, must also develop a formula to insure that schools and libraries in the poorest areas get the most help. Otherwise, they say, the institutions in more affluent communities could be the biggest beneficiaries.

For schools and libraries, a 50-percent discount for telecommunications and Internet services is a frequently mentioned figure. ''But without some sort of means test, the wealthy communities would benefit the most from the discounts because they could afford to purchase the most services,'' said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America.

More than discount-rate telecommunications services, to be sure, will be needed to help close the digital divide between wealthy and poorer communities. The Microsoft Corporation, for example, supports 215 libraries in low-income urban and rural areas. In the program, Microsoft provides hardware, software and training for libraries, which must pay the telecommunications costs themselves.

''The telecommunications is part of the puzzle, but only one part,'' said Christopher Hedrick, who heads the library program for Microsoft. ''Real technology access for poorer areas requires public and private-sector support.''

Photo: Going on line at the Flatbush branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at 22 Linden Boulevard. A national panel will soon recommend how the Government should help libraries gain more access to the information age. (Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)